Enclave Preview

Multi-platform Xbox (PC) games have really begun to thrive like crazy in the past few months. Conspiracy Entertainment and Starbreeze Studios have come together to bring you an exceptional Xbox action game with RPG elements, entitled Enclave. In Enclave, you will be swept away by intense melee style combat, trying out all sorts of swords, axes and even long-range weaponry, and moseying through environments that range from huge castles, to fiery pits with boiling lava. An important thing to add is that Enclave was a multiplayer-oriented FPS in the beginning of its development. Over time, it evolved into a 3^rd-person single player action game with strong emphasis on the player’s freedom of movement and a quest-based reward\experience system.

I bet he's got a nasty temper!

Is this cave alive?

Naturally, a good single-player oriented game wouldn’t be much without some kind of storyline. Many eons ago the world of Enclave was split in two and a big fissure lied in the middle of it. One side was occupied by the righteous people called the Enclave, and the other by the evil and extremely brutal Outlanders. Time has passed, and now the great gap is closing, which brought the opposing sides to a great conflict. Since the rift became thinner, more and more skirmishes began to break out between the conflicted sides, until they were both finally engaged in an all-out war.

As I’ve mentioned in the story overview, the characters in Enclave are divided into Light Characters (called the Enclave) and Dark Characters (the Outlanders). Light classes are as follows: Druid, Engineer, Halfling, Halfling, Huntress, Knight, and Wizard. Each of them has a unique weapon. Here’s a short list of some of the weapons you’ll get to use as the Enclave: battleaxe, buckler, throwing bomb, burst bow, curved dagger, dwarven crossbow, incinerator, kiteshield, long sword, mace, shatteraxe, and the warhammer. The Outlander classes are divided into the following: Berserker, Assassin, Bombardier, Goblin, Sorceress, and Lich. These rough and tough blokes might usually be armed with a bearded axes, bladeshields, broad swords, falchions, grease bombs, etc. All of these weapons however, are not the only ones you’ll get to make use of in battle. An interesting addition is that players will have granted access to a few handy and destructive siege weaponry, such as the catapult or ballista. With this effective weaponry you will be capable of destroying various objects in the environment (in real-time of course).

The game generally lays emphasis on hand-to-hand combat. This means that no matter which class the player chooses, he will be able to enjoy slicing his opponents in battle with a wide variety of long-range and melee weapons. For example, characters like the Paladin and Ogre have attuned skills when it comes to skirmishing. Naturally, other characters like the Sorceress will be more adept in the use of magic, while the Huntress is well-versed in the handling of crossbows and similar weaponry. No matter which one of these you select you’re gonna have to be prepared for some serious resistance along the way. The worlds of Enclave are populated with various dangerous and treacherous native creatures. But, alongside these, you get to face enormous and malevolent boss-creatures, who also have their own skills and weapons - which makes them tricky opponents.

Enclave has a vast environment (allowing players to fight it out in over 25 extensive levels), where you can engage in multiplayer combat or complete one of the two large single-player campaigns. While walking through these large environments, players will have the opportunity to go anywhere and do anything; their actions are pretty much going to determine the way the plot of the game unfolds.

I hope I don't fall on my ass. That would be so undignified.

Cool water effects...

There will be tons of RPG-like things to motivate you throughout the course of the game: various exciting mission objectives, NPC interaction, and so on. Still, most of the time you’ll be focusing on the skill growth of your character. The abilities of your character may be crucial to a successful objective. The mission objectives carry an economic reward system as well. This system allows players to receive gold after each successful mission. With that gold, they can purchase new stuff in between levels (such as armor, weapons, and other useful items).

The game also offers a multiplayer mode with AI-controlled teammates, but besides that you can be sure that the developers will bring on the ol’ split screen mode. However, LAN won’t be left out as well. What impressed me more is the fact that this cool-looking game is also going to offer players a chance to engage in a co-op mode. Even though the multiplayer will be mostly team-based, the makers of Enclave have ensured us that the whole flow of gameplay is closely related to the story and that every player has more than just plain deathmatch goals (in multiplayer duels your missions are mostly going to be character-driven). And while you’re enjoying that, you’ll also have tons of sub-enemies to deal with.

The engine powering Enclave existed ever since ’97. Now Starbreeze Studios is using an advanced version of the same engine and has already proclaimed it as quite a successful tool for game development. Conspiracy Entertainment recently unveiled that the development team is intently working on some unique and juicy effects. For instance, they managed to achieve a rather realistic collision system, which allows you to shoot an arrow straight into your foe’s eye (if the arrow is strong enough, it can even hurl the opponent’s head and stick it to the wall behind him - nice one indeed!).

The models are highly detailed and were designed well so as to coincide with the rich environment. As expected, most of the visual effects were optimized for the GeForce 3 (enhanced particle effects, pixel and vertex shaders). The developers have also announced some nice surprises prepared for the oncoming PC version - which is going be released much later than the Xbox version.

Enclave is near the final stages of development, and it should be out fairly soon. So far, we expect the Xbox version to hit the stores in Q3 2002, with a suggested retail price of $49.99. I have to emphasize though that the PC version is still far from a solid release date, so hold on to your boxers, PC gamers! I think this one will be worth the wait though...